MEng/BEng (Hons) Civil and Environmental Engineering (with D&A College)

Work placements often lead to summer jobs

This is the only Scottish BEng to offer a guaranteed 12-week work placement. Which is useful, because around 70% of our students get involved with summer work in the engineering sector through connections they’ve made from work placements or by networking.

In fact, around 25% of students go on to full-time employment with their work placement provider. This is one of the features of this degree that leads to the high employment rate after graduation. Our industry partners include organisations such as:

• Transport Scotland 

• Balfour Beatty 

• Sweco 

• BAM 

• BEAR Scotland

Chartered (CEng) Engineer or Incorporated (IEng) Engineer?

Choose the route that best matches your career ambitions. 

You can study the five-year Integrated Masters (MEng), which makes you a Chartered Engineer (CEng), or the four-year Bachelor's (BEng Hons) degree, leading to an Incorporated Engineer (IEng). Both are internationally recognised and highly respected across the engineering industry, offering different career pathways, levels of responsibility and areas of specialism. Find out more from the Engineering Council.

Flexible degree - tailor your studies

Discover how engineering can improve the lives of people and communities while supporting a more sustainable future. You'll explore the role engineering plays in creating safe, resilient and sustainable places. We help you develop key employment skills that are transferable amongst engineering disciplines, including: 

• Analytics and decision making. 

• A creative approach to problem-solving. 

• Critical thinking and the ability to interpret data.

This is one of a portfolio of three engineering courses. If your interests and career plans change, you can switch to another related degree at the end of first year. Find out more.

Looking to start in Year 2?

Check out our MEng/BEng Civil and Environmental Engineering degree, which starts in year two. 

How the course works 

Year one: Your first year at Dundee and Angus College (D&A)

You'll spend year one at the College, then join us at Abertay from year two onwards. 

Learning at college is built around continuous assessment, so you won't sit any exams.

Term (semester) one: September to December
You'll be on campus at D&A roughly three days a week for 16 weeks. You'll study nine units over the first term, and be assessed on each one as you complete it. As there are no exams, your marks build up throughout each term.

Units you'll cover in term one include:

• Engineering Mathematics.

• Materials and Testing.

• Surveying.

• CAD.

• Geotechnics.

• Civil Engineering Specialisms.

Term two: January to May
From January you'll be on the D&A campus around two days a week for 16 weeks. Alongside your other units, you'll have one two-hour session per week covering your graded unit. 

Your graded unit means you'll work on a single brief across three stages: planning, development and evaluation. This is where you show you can take an engineering problem from the initial idea right through to a finished, reviewed piece of work.

Units in term two include:

• Structural Mechanics.

• Fluid Mechanics.

• Civil Engineering Technology.

• Project Management.

• Your Graded Unit.

Progression from D&A to Abertay 
During the first year you'll spend at least one session on campus at Abertay, so the move to the Abertay campus in year two feels familiar rather than completely new. 

Year two onwards: learning and assessment at Abertay

Abertay is at the cutting edge of engineering – both theoretical and practical – so from year two you'll study in a broad range of learning environments.

This includes the traditional lecture and tutorial format, student-led learning, interactive class sessions, field trips and site-visits, and a substantial element of lab and design work. Our class sizes are smaller than average, meaning we can spend more time with each student. 

We encourage independent study, which means you take responsibility for your own learning. You'll be assessed in a variety of methods, which means you can demonstrate your progress in different ways.

Coursework typically includes design challenges, laboratory reports, essays and oral presentations. Formal exams include questions that require short answers, problem-solving and design. 

Your placement will be assessed by industrial and academic supervisors, as well as by a report and an oral presentation. In your final dissertation, you’re individually supported by one of our research-active members of staff. 

Covering important questions

We’ll challenge you to ask important questions, such as: 

• What does it take to plan and build structures? 

• Can construction materials be reclaimed to develop new roads? 

• Are sustainable construction and low energy building challenges being met? 

• How can we work with nature to deliver more sustainable engineering solutions? 

Then we'll help you work out how to answer them.

This highly practical degree combines engineering principles with environmental science and management concepts. It equips you with the skills you need to lead teams who design and develop sustainable solutions to continually evolving engineering problems.  

Five professional accreditations

Accreditations mean that a professional body or organisation has approved the learning outcomes of the course. This is a mark of quality, designed to enhance your employment prospects. This degree is accredited by the:

• Institution of Civil Engineers.

• Institution of Structural Engineers.

• Institute of Highway Engineers.

• Chartered Institution of Highways & Transportation.

• Permanent Way Institution.

The Joint Board assess our degrees, who have the authority from the Engineering Council to award professional qualifications and accreditations. 

This means that, on behalf of the Engineering Council, they officially certify that these courses fully or partially meet the academic benchmarks required to become a registered Chartered Engineer (CEng) or an Incorporated Engineer (IEng).

It's a flexible degree

Tailor your studies to suit your ambitions and interests. After your first year HNC, you can move to another related engineering degree if you choose to. 

This approach means you can keep your options open.  So if you haven’t worked out exactly what you want to do yet, this is a great way to start. There’s plenty of academic support to help you decide – it’s an exciting choice to make.  

The first-year HNC curriculum covers an introduction to engineering and all the specialisms, which means you can choose to move to one of the following: 

• BSc (Hons) Engineering Management 

• Meng/BEng Civil and Environmental Engineering

• BSc (Hons) Environmental Management and Sustainability

We're here to help if that's what you decide to do, and your lecturers are more than happy to talk it through with you. 

Fees and Funding

The tuition fees you'll pay and the funding available to you depends on factors such as your nationality, location, personal circumstances and the course you're studying. If you’re studying a full-time undergraduate degree, your fee status will be classed as one of the following:

• Scotland

• England, Wales, Northern Ireland, and the Republic of Ireland

• International

Fee Status

Your fee status is typically based on the country where you've lived on a regular, non-temporary basis for the three years prior to the start of your course.

We’ll confirm your tuition fees once you’ve applied.

International

International includes applicants from EU countries who do not hold Pre-Settled or Settled Status in the UK. (Students from the Republic of Ireland are not included.)

Annual Tuition Fees

_{*For Scottish undergraduate students, tuition fees are set by the Scottish Government and confirmed annually. If the approved fee level changes in future, Abertay may update its published tuition fees in line with the confirmed government rate.}

_{**Tuition fees for Rest of UK students are reviewed annually. Where permitted, the University may increase tuition fees for continuing students (those starting their course from September 2027) in line with changes to the maximum tuition fee cap set by the UK Government. Students should take the potential for future fee increases into account when planning the overall cost of their studies.}

_{***Eligible international students will automatically receive a scholarship worth between £12,000-£28,000 over the duration of their course.}

More information

See more about tuition fees, grants, bursaries, tuition fee loans, maintenance loans and living costs in our undergraduate fees and funding section.